Specifications

Outdial TAP Networking
194 025-9034AA
TNPP is better suited for those cases where priority or function code information needs to
be relayed between paging terminals, where a large volume of pages must be sent, where
many long display messages are to be transferred, or where it is desirable to eliminate the
need to have networked subscribers entered on all terminals where they may be paged.
TNPP is generally used with a dedicated data circuit or RF data packet links, which is
more expensive than the ordinary phone line and 212 style modem.
Limitations of Outdial TAP
Outdial TAP requires that a subscriber have a database entry on both the originating and
receiving paging terminals. TAP is an ID paging protocol; it transfers just the subscriber
ID and the display message. There is no standard way to send capcode pages using TAP.
Most implementations of TAP do not support capcode paging. Those that do support
capcode paging have no method in common of doing so.
There is no standard way within TAP to convey function code or priority information. Any
function and code priority information from the terminal of origin will not be relayed to
the receiving terminal. Also there is a possibility that the subscriber’s attributes on the
calling and called systems may not agree. This means that not only can the function code
used on the two systems be different, the subscriber’s accounts may have differing paging
modes or even different capcodes for his pager as well. Thus some care should be taken
when setting up the subscriber’s accounts on the sending and receiving paging terminals,
to insure that all accounts will work as desired.
ZbaseW allows for only a single “external” ID that may be entered for a subscriber. That
is, any single status “V” record may have only one ID number to use when calling into a
TAP destination. This means that the subscriber who is to have multiple outdial TAP
destinations must have the same ID code on all sites being dialed into, or some extra work
must be done to set up their database entry.
Currently there is a maximum of 16 overall possible TAP destinations. This is similar to
the maximum of 16 zones supported by a station card. It is not likely that this will be a
problem, as using too many destinations may create a bottleneck for remote paging, due to
the overhead of placing phone calls. If your remote display page traffic gets near the limit
of Outdial TAP, it may be time to check into TNPP networking to carry some of the traffic.
Outdial TAP is intended to directly call the final destination of a page. With TNPP it is
easy to set up a page that will both be passed from terminal to terminal within a TNPP
network and be locally paged at terminals along the way. As TAP requires each terminal to
have an ID for subscribers using TAP, all intermediary terminals would need a proper
database record for each such subscriber.